In November 1816, Byron wrote to Douglas Kinnaird from Venice explaining that his ‘greatest error’ had been to remain in what he terms ‘your country’, England, ‘that is to say – my greatest error but one – my ambition’ (BLJ V.135). Byron declares that he ‘would never willingly dwell in that “tight little Island”’ and that if he could manage to arrange his ‘pecuniary concerns in England’, then Kinnaird ‘might consider me as posthumous’ (BLJ V.136). For England, then, that tight little island, Byron is dead. Indeed, he is only to return, eight years later, in a coffin. In this respect, his departure earlier in the year may be read as an act of self-exile and, in terms of England, as an act of self-annihilation.

This departure was framed by a dramatic rehearsal for death, by Byron playing dead. The day before he left England in April, Byron had visited and lain down in the grave of the poet Charles Churchill (1732–64) – a visit immortalised in a poem written later that year, entitled ‘Churchill's Grave: A Fact Literally Rendered’.